


the greatest of these

by alreadybroken



Category: Hell on Wheels (TV)
Genre: AU: Naomi Never Happened, Angst, Cunnilingus, Dual Threads AU, F/M, Ruth still climbs those Thirteen Steps, So full warnings for, Sorry Ezra you're a plot device, but also..., contemplations on the meaning of sin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-24
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2020-09-25 10:55:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20375593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alreadybroken/pseuds/alreadybroken
Summary: She’d told Cullen the truth: the longest walk of her life had been that shameful shuffle through town, all jealous and hurt and covered in shit. It had been her longest walk, and then morning dawned.In truth, the longest walk of Ruth’s life was her last.It went quickly: the familiar faces all around her, solemn and sad. The packed dirt of the road, the cool traces of darkness still leaving the air, the unexpected silence of her town. It was familiar, and recognizable, but already different, somehow-Or maybe it wasn’t the town. It certainly hadn’t changed overnight, with the exception of the gallows. The place hadn’t changed: she had.Was this how ghosts saw the land of the living? Over-saturated but pale, present but distant?She would think of the gallows like Elijah’s chariot: the vehicle that would lift her up to heaven.Of course, Elijah’s chariot hadn’t had stairs.“I’ll be with you,” said Mr. George. “To the end.”Ruth mounted the first step.OR: An AU with two narrative threads. The first is what could have happened if Naomi had never come into the picture. The second... the second is all of the things Ruth gave up as she climbed those thirteen steps.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sciosophia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sciosophia/gifts).

###  _ 1 Corinthians 13:13 “And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.” _

When Ruth had been very young she’d fallen through the cellar door of their little Kansas cottage. She’d been told not to jump on it, but she loved the sound it made: the hollow booming; the vibrations that ran up into her chest and hummed there like a great, ancient heartbeat. 

One autumn she’d fallen through. The doors were damp and old, and she’d grown a little (just a little) over the dry summer months. She’d leapt into the air, her face upturned to the cloudless sky, and then she was plummeting, falling away from all that blue through a gaping hole in the ground. Her world had gone from light to black, and she hadn’t feared the inevitable impact half so much as she’d been afraid of the dark. 

The fall had hurt. The sensation of not being able to drag air into her lungs, that had hurt more. Everything had slowed: the heartbeat in her ears, the sound of the doors flapping open in the breeze, her little fingers scrabbling at the dark soil. 

Everything was slow, until it wasn’t. 

~~~

She’d told Cullen the truth: the longest walk of her life had been that shameful shuffle through town, all jealous and hurt and covered in shit. It _ had _ been her longest walk, and then morning dawned. 

In truth, the longest walk of Ruth’s life was her last. 

It went quickly: the familiar faces all around her, solemn and sad. The packed dirt of the road, the cool traces of darkness still leaving the air, the unexpected silence of her town. It was familiar, and recognizable, but already different, somehow-

Or maybe it wasn’t the town. It certainly hadn’t changed overnight, with the exception of the gallows. The place hadn’t changed: she had. 

_ Was this how ghosts saw the land of the living? Over-saturated but pale, present but distant? _

She would think of the gallows like Elijah’s chariot: the vehicle that would lift her up to heaven. 

Of course, Elijah’s chariot hadn’t had stairs. 

“I’ll be with you,” said Mr. George. “To the end.”

Ruth mounted the first step.

~~~

They say you never hear the bullet. 

Might be the case, might not. They say you never hear the bullet that kills you, and on that sunny, clear spring morning Cullen would have welcomed the chance to find out. Gunfire and blood, those things made up most of Cullen’s world. He knew how powder burns felt; knew how gunsmoke could thicken the air to acrid, bitter fog. He dreamed of the echo of artillery, the crack of riles, the stacked reports of a revolver. 

They say you never hear the bullet. 

But he heard Ruth’s shoe take that first step. 

* * *

At first the railroad struck Ruth as a prideful simulacrum of god’s creation. The prairie was as green as any original garden, and the road was a beautiful and terrible undertaking: even the engines seemed almost alive in their dark, fearful symmetry. They spat steam and screamed into the sky, challenging man and nature alike to stop it. She was reminded of the Tower of Babel, except instead of building up these men were building out. Of course, the men of the railroad weren’t interested in conversing with the angels- no, the devil himself seemed much more to their tastes. 

She’d gone to the railroad to find her father. Some part of her had hoped that this time he’d love her enough to stay; to provide the sense of family that had been lacking in her life for oh so long. 

He hadn’t. Instead he’d cursed her, and then he’d died. 

And yet she stayed with the railroad anyway. Ruth told herself the town needed her, required a voice of reason in the darkness. (Looking back, Ruth would say that she stayed out of desperation: if she couldn’t find a sense of community in the castoffs and oddities that made up Hell On Wheels, she wouldn’t be able to find it anywhere.)

The first year was the hardest. Sean and Joseph, her father, the fire, the attacks. And all through it a still, small voice was telling her to stay. 

She did. 

Things got better when Louise came to town. For the first time in years she had a friend, one close to her in age. The working women still shunned her, and the men looked at her with a mixture of respect and resentment in their eyes (for who loves to be reminded of their own sin?), but Ruth had found a confidante. It made all the difference. 

“Come on,” said Louise, standing in the doorway to Ruth’s church. “It’s a beautiful day. Let’s go.”

Ruth set aside her church ledger and took her calico, every-day bonnet off its hook. “Where are we going?”

“Out,” said Louise firmly, looping one of her arms through Ruth’s and hiking up a large basket with the other. “It’s spring, and the sun is shining, and I think there’s a line in your book about stewarding creation.”

She always called it _ your book, _as though distancing herself from the Bible would distance her from god. Maybe someday Louise would tell her what it was in the Bible that had hurt her so. 

“It does,” said Ruth, tipping her face up to the cloudless sky. It was a perfect May day: nearly hot, but not scorchingly so, with a gentle breeze that drove away the flies. “What stories are you working on?”

With relish Louise launched into a story of murder and mayhem that would take up an entire week’s worth of papers back east. Here, in the lawless (but never godless) West, it would stir gossip for barely more than a day. 

“Apparently both men grew up in County Cork, in West Ireland. Their grandfathers had been neighbors, and- I got different stories, here. One man said the feud started over a cow, and another said a hedge. But either way, Mr. Logan and Mr. Ennison ran into each other outside the pub after soothing the week away with whiskey.”

Ruth wondered what it would be like to care so much about your family that you’d fight _ and die _over an argument your grandfather had started more than fifty years earlier. What kind of loyalty did that take?

“The two men revisited the argument, graduated to personal insults, and shot each other in the street. A double murder, with nobody left to hang.”

“Was it like this back in New York?” Ruth asked, huffing a bit as they climbed one of the deceptively tall hills. Louise, of course, was walking as easily as could be. 

“No, and yes,” said the reporter. She’d taken her hat off as soon as they’d left town, and Ruth envied her her ease. “There were so many murders that the minor ones went unreported.”

Ruth blinked, trying to imagine a world where there were more murders than newspaper space. 

“But enough about me,” said Louise as they started down the other side of the hill. “What’s your sermon on tomorrow?”

“You could always come and find out,” said Ruth, smiling at her friend to take away the sting. “I know you’re awake in time for services.”

“Awake, maybe,” said Louise, grabbing a stick from the ground and thrashing the grass. “But not ready.”

Ruth let it go. Over the past year she’d learned one hard-fought lesson: nobody liked preachy people. Not that they couldn’t like a preacher- they just didn’t want to socialize with someone who stood on the street corner and reminded them of their sins. They were all sinners, weren’t they? Why should she act as though she was better than anyone else. 

“I’m going to preach about Noah,” she said, admiring the day again. “It seems right to celebrate spring, and a return of life.”

“...and all the deaths that preceded it,” Louise mumbled. She steered them parallel to the stream, towards a clump of cottonwood trees. 

“What are we doing?” Ruth asked, nudging her friend. “If you wanted to have a picnic, we’ve passed plenty of nice spots.

“I know,” said Louise, whacking her stick into the underbrush that surrounded the little stand of trees. “But we aren’t out here for a picnic.”

“We aren’t?”

“No,” said Louise, hitting at the grass again. “We’re here for a bath.”

“A bath,” said Ruth blankly. “We- the stick-”

“This was to scare away snakes,” said Louise. In Ruth’s opinion, she said it far too casually. Louise tramped off into the shade, and tugged Ruth along behind her. 

“It’s probably too cold to jump in entirely, but we can wade and wash with the flannels I brought.”

“And- but- we’d be naked. Outside.”

“Right,” said Louise, grinning back at Ruth. “If I remember correctly, people were naked outside quite a few times in that book of yours.”

“How would we dry off?”

Louise rolled her eyes, dropped the hamper, and started unbuttoning her bodice. “With towels. I have a comb, soap, washrags, and flannel towels. The only thing you need to supply is your cooperation.”

Ruth debated. She’d be happy to sit and keep Louise company while she bathed, but then she’d have to carry buckets of water back and forth for her bath later tonight. It was a warm day, and-

“Oh, alright,” she said, turning her back to Louise and fumbled with her buttons. “But you can’t tell anyone.”

“Tell anyone what? That their preacher lady has skin under all those layers?”

“I-”

Louise gasped and Ruth spun around, down to only her shift, corset, and stockings. “What? What is it?”

“Just the cold,” said Louise, standing knee deep in the stream just as naked as god made her. She made no move to cover herself, and Ruth forced herself to do the same. She quickly undressed, picked up a sliver of plain soap and a washcloth, and stepped into the stream. 

“W-why did you think this was a good idea, again?” she asked, sudsing the cloth and rubbing it over herself as quickly as she could. The air might be warm, but the water felt like it had just melted from ice that morning. 

“Because I hate toting buckets through the streets,” said Louise, apparently unchilled. “This saves time.”

“You’re the s-s-soul of efficiency,” said Ruth, running the cloth over her forehead so vigorously that lye suds dripped into her eyes. 

“I am, aren’t I,” said Louise. She was splashing clean water onto herself to rinse, and when Ruth sent a shivering glare her way she was (pettily) satisfied to see that Louise was the littlest bit pale, too. “That efficiency is why I brought my flask, too.”

“I don’t drink-” Ruth started to say, and then stopped. Stopped talking, not moving: if she stopped rubbing her skin as hastily as she could she might freeze into a statue right here. 

“You don’t have to,” said Louise, stepping back onto the grass. “But I thought I’d offer.”

Ruth rinsed and followed her out, thankful that Louise’s towel reached from her collarbone all the way almost to her ankles. She wrapped it tightly around herself and then plopped down next to Louise in a patch of sun. 

“Here,” she said, brandishing the flask. “Want some?”

Ruth took the silvery rectangle and weighed it in her fingers. She’d be a fool if she let the sins of her father become her burden, too. He couldn’t hold his drink. That didn’t mean she couldn’t hold hers. 

She took a long swig, swallowed, and then gasped as absolute _ fire _ burned her sinuses, throat, and belly. “Why-” she coughed, her eyes watering. “Why do so many men drink this for _ fun? _

Louise reclaimed the flask and took a much more composed gulp. “Give it a second.”

They sat in the sun. Louise unwrapped herself and lay back on her towel, totally nude and blissfully comfortable with herself. Ruth sat in her swaddling. 

“Have some more,” said Louise, passing the flask over again. 

She’s already begun the experiment, so why not? Ruth took another gulp, trying to pour it back over her tongue that she wouldn’t even taste it. The stream burbled along, and soft, early-summer leaves rustled overhead. 

Gradually, like the sun rising in the morning, a tingling warmth settled in Ruth’s stomach and spread outwards. When she turned to smile at Louise, the other woman was already looking at her. 

“It’s nice, isn’t it?” she asked. 

Ruth nodded. “Like a hot cup of tea, but … bigger.”

Louise nodded and closed her eyes. “That’s how you know you should stop. If you go too far past that, you’ll only feel worse.”

“Alright,” said Ruth. She closed her eyes and enjoyed the way the sun turned the inside of her eyelids red and warm. 

“You know,” said Louise slowly, as lazily as a high cloud drifting across the sky. “It wouldn’t hurt to let people see you like this.”

“Wearing nothing but a towel?” Ruth teased.

“No,” said Louise, reaching over to pinch Ruth’s bicep lightly. “Relaxed. Having a drink.”

“I’m supposed to be a… a positive example,” said Ruth, trying to ignore the nervous tightening in her belly at Louise’s suggestion. 

“Ruth, I’m not suggesting you take up with a man, or- or frequent the dancing hall. Just be yourself.”

They lay quietly for a few more minutes, soaking in the sunshine and an unhurried afternoon. Ruth thought about what Louise had said, about letting her congregation see the side of her that she tried to hard to keep locked away.

“You never met my father,” said Ruth slowly, almost hating to spoil the sunshine with this ugliness. “But he was a hard, cruel man. I can see that now. My mother and I, we’d tiptoe around him. We tried to be so quiet, and so clean, and so pious that maybe- maybe he’d treat us the way he’d promise to from the pulpit on Sundays. 

“In a house like that… you learn quickly that you have to earn love. I think I was trying to do that here, too. If I was kind enough, and welcoming enough, and _ good _ enough… I’d find my community. That I’d be a better example of a Christian. I think- I think I’ve been worried that if people really knew me-” _ lustful, angry, silly- _“they wouldn’t love me.” 

She felt lighter for having said it out loud, for having given voice to a sentiment that had haunted her all the way across the plains.

“Oh, Ruth.” Louise sat up and tugged Ruth across the grass and into her arms. “You are so very easy to love.”

* * *

_ Pride. _

What a terrible sin. Ruth’s Catholic counterparts claimed that it’s a deadly one. She'd always been taught that all sins were held equal in the eyes of the lord. She certainly hoped that was the case- which was funny, wasn’t it? She was prepared to hang for murder. 

Pride. It was pride that had driven her out west: she wasn’t going to beg for money, not from anyone but the man who should have provided for her. Not her brother, not her parish, not her neighbors. When Mother died Ruth’s stiff-backed pride had driven her out to the end of the tracks. She was worth more than begging.

Vanity was pride, wasn’t it? And only a vain woman would care how her soon-to-be corpse looked as she walked out to her death. 

What a weight it was, on the first of thirteen steps, to let pride fall away. 

~~~

Goddammit. 

He’d told her, hadn’t he? Told her that he couldn’t watch her kill herself. Situation like this? Woman wanted to die. She’d been given every way out and hadn’t taken ‘em; had looked salvation right in the face and picked her fate anyway. 

Cullen had always thought that the time and place of death was god’s territory, more or less. To everything there is a season, ain’t that right?

A spring morning wasn’t the season for Ruth to die.

* * *

“Are you hurt anywhere?” Ruth asked, looking at the painfully thin young boy lying on a cot. 

He blinked, and didn’t answer. He hadn’t answered any of her questions, and as long as she stayed in motion he wouldn’t shut his eyes to rest. 

There were footfalls on the steps to her church, and Ruth looked up to Cullen, one arm slung over Psalm’s shoulder. “He did it, Miss Ruthie,” said Psalms, dragging Cullen through the door. Most of the men were gone from her makeshift infirmary (one way or another), and he had plenty of cots to pick from. “We got us a sweetwater well.”

Ruth puffed out a sigh of relief and forced her gaze from Cullen to Psalms. “Why is he wet?” she asked, hurrying to them. 

Psalms deposited Cullen on a cot by the door. “He got the first taste,” he said. “Then the fool dumped the bucket on his head.”

“Sweaty,” Cullen mumbled, letting his head fall back onto the canvas.

In a move that she’d perfected over the last several days, Ruth placed her palm over his forehead. “You don’t feel feverish.”

“M’not anymore,” said Cullen. He was toeing fitfully at his boots, and Ruth almost smiled at this glimpse of a younger Cullen she was seeing. It was easy to imagine a thinner, teenage Cullen sprawled on a piece of furniture and working his boots off with his toes. Had his mama scolded him for it? 

“I’m gonna go help fill the tanks,” said Psalms, touching the brim of his hat. 

“Good man,” Cullen mumbled. 

“Thank you, Psalms,” said Ruth, watching him go.

Cullen looked like he wasn’t planning on going anywhere. He had a forearm up over his eyes, his hair was dripping over the edge of the canvas cot, and his breathing had already gone slow and easy. 

“Mr. Bohannon-”

“Cullen,” he mumbled. “We been over this.”

Ruth nodded and tried not to stare at the way his green shirt was plastered to his chest. He was _ sick. _ Lust was a _ sin. _

“I’m going to go to your tent to fetch a change of clothes,” she said. “You can’t sleep all soaking wet after being so sick.”

He didn’t move his arm off his eyes, but heaved a sigh. “You ain’t gonna let me rest ‘til I’m all tidied away, are you.”

“No,” said Ruth, enjoying the spark of power it sent zipping through her. “You and Ezra need to clean up.”

“Ezra, huh,” said Cullen, not shifting an inch as Ruth walked towards the door. 

It was quick work to return with Cullen’s clothes, and soon enough he was washed and dressed and onto the clean cot by Ezra’s. 

“‘S the boy asleep?” he asked. Exhaustion and dehydration had turned his voice into a low rasp, and for a heady moment Ruth thought she could feel it rumbling through the soles of her shoes. 

“Yes,” she said. “As soon as I start moving he wakes up to watch me. He still hasn’t spoken.”

Cullen’s eyes stayed closed, but Ruth could tell he wasn’t asleep. “Takes ‘em that way sometimes. See something terrible and they just don’t talk again. Had a kid in my outfit like that, back in the war. Damn good soldier, but didn’t say a word after Sharpsburg. Was like he thought if he opened his mouth he’d just start screaming and never stop.”

Ruth fought down the urge to go stroke Ezra’s hair. Whatever he’d seen, it had been something too terrible for the eyes of a child. 

“Why Ezra?”

Cullen’s voice was slow and shallow, like the soft splash of a nearly dried puddle. Ruth kept her own voice quiet in return. “Ezra is an Old Testament name- he chronicled the story of Cyrus, who was tasked with rebuilding the Temple of the Lord.”

Cullen huffed a little, the ghost of a laugh. “Sounds about right,” he said, and then he was asleep. 

Ruth sat in the light of her warm little church and thought about building congregations, and temples, and families. She’d spent more time among the men in the last few days than she had in the previous year. It had warmed her heart to learn of the families, all the places they’d seen, and the goals that they held. Wouldn’t it be better to share her own hopes and struggles in return? 

God had never seen fit to send her a man who would stay; who would be gentle and kind. She glanced at Cullen’s sleeping profile, and then at the curled lump of blankets that was Ezra. Maybe this was his answer: a family of kindred spirits, a little island of sameness in a sea of strife and longing. She’d pray about it, and watch for a sign.

* * *

Ruth had seen more of death in Hell On Wheels than she’d seen in all of her previous years. Cullen had told her that hanging was the worst way to go, and he was entitled to that opinion. 

In Ruth’s small opinion, the worst way to die was alone. 

(Ezra had died alone.) 

She wasn’t alone: Mr. George was with her, as he promised that he’d be, but so was her church. All of those souls, all those people who had shared sickness and deprivation and terror and love. Part of her had doubted; doubted that anyone had noticed the slim, pale girl at her prayers. She’d known that she didn’t fit in here, had felt it night after night as she lay in her cold cot and listened to all the conversations and lives humming along without her. It didn’t bother her this morning.

This was the right thing. These were her people. 

Loneliness wasn’t her concern. Not any more.

~~~

He had time to get a horse. 

Cullen was in the alley between the jailhouse and the railroad office. He could get to the stable, grab his horse, and be back here in time. He could do it: grab Ruth, put her on the horse, and ride off. Pick any spot on the map, they’d start over. He’d started over before with a damn sight less than this. 

She wouldn’t let him. She’d insist that he was married, that his wife and child belonged with him more than she did. 

God save him from honorable women. 

* * *

The sign she’d asked for came quickly. Sean came to confess, as papists were wont to do, and Mickey killed him, there by the alter of her church. Sean, who had only wanted someone to accept him. Sean, who’d come west with a lantern and a heart full of dreams. 

The violence was shocking and incomprehensible and overwhelming. So, too, was what Cullen did next.

He came to her as the sun set red on that bloody, terrible day. He came to her smelling of graveyard dirt and honestly earned sweat, and he held her to him. He didn’t say a word, just pulled her into him and didn’t shy from her tears. 

The weeping started with grief for Sean and Mickey, the Cain and Abel of the Union Pacific. One had always had what the other wanted. They’d been brothers, they’d been _ family, _and that hadn’t been enough to save them. (It hadn’t been enough to save her, either.)

When the first storm of grief passed, the tears turned quiet and still Cullen held her. Around them the light went golden, and then pale with that last wash of mourning-tinted light before the night closed in. 

Those tears were for herself. She could admit that in the privacy of her own mind, as her fingers clenched in the worn leather of Cullen’s vest. She was crying for the girl who had never been held like that, and crying for the woman who’d have to walk through the rest of her life knowing how wonderful this was, and never getting it again. Like a tingling limb to which blood flow was stubbornly returning, all of Ruth’s quietly held dreams grew into bloom again. 

Cullen, holding her in her grief, was shocking and incomprehensible and overwhelming. So, too, was her love for him.


	2. Chapter 2

On the third step Ruth realized she wasn’t worried any more. She didn’t have the time to do something so mundane as worry. Money, chores, the health of her parish. These weren’t her burdens to carry any longer. 

Moving with more confidence Ruth took the fourth step up, and with the movement felt her longing leave her, too. Her lifespan could be measured in heartbeats now: three hundred? two? 

No. She didn’t have longings. Not any more. 

~~~

It had to be hanging. So many ways of killing a body and that good woman; that pure, wonderful woman was gonna hang. 

He could shoot her- get her quick, right as the door dropped. She would ‘hang’ like the papers said she should, but his- (not his, never his) Ruth wouldn’t suffer. All the good she’d done in the world? Woman like that shouldn’t suffer for it.

* * *

Ruth’s behind was slowly going numb where she sat on the edge of a crate, and Ezra had already muddied the knees of his trousers and popped a button off his little suspenders. She was passing the time by turning the cuff on her pale linen dress, and she kept pricking her finger with the needle: it was impossible to keep track of both an energetic boy and her stitches. 

“Ezra, please come down,” she asked again, looking up into the narrow beams that held up the church frame. 

The boy only smiled, confident that she wouldn’t come up after him. It was hard to argue with only a smile. 

“I’m afraid you’ll fall and get hurt,” she said, trying to reason with the boy. “It would hate to see you hurt.”

It was true. He’d been with her just over a fortnight, and already he’d made a place for himself in her heart. He was a good boy, and kind, but one with a streak of mischief that was making her days very interesting indeed.

“The men will be here soon to pack the church,” she said. “And you’ll have to get down then, do you understand?”

Ezra nodded and went back to lounging along the beam like a very small panther. 

Ruth sighed and walked out of her empty church. She’d packed their personal belongings into a trunk and valise. The church candlesticks, collection dishes, and vestments had been packed in the wood crate where she’d been sitting. She’d unstrapped all of the canvas tent material that she could reach, and now all she had to do was wait: it was just past dawn, and Hell On Wheels was on the move. 

Ruth walked out of the tent and into the street, which was a flurry of activity. The men’s tents had been struck already, leaving only dry squares in the morning dew to mark that they’d ever been there. The stable master had hitched his horses to a long train of heavy wagons, and they were being filled and sent down the rails one by one by one. 

Only three weeks, and they were on the move again.

Ruth’s church was always first. It amused her, in a quiet sort of way. The church went first and was put up last while the saloon sprang eternal. It was alright, though. She had a place here, in the turmoil of the town. These were her people. 

“Morning, Miss Ruth,” said Psalms, tipping his hat to her as he walked by with a heavy beam over one shoulder. 

“Good morning,” she said, smiling at him. “The church is packed up.”

“Yes ma’am,” said Psalms, still walking. “Be getting there shortly.”

Ruth walked back into the church and looked up at Ezra. “I’m going to walk down the street to see if Miss Louise needs help with her newspaper. Would you like to come with me?” 

Nothing. 

“Well, you know where I’ll be. I should have named you Zacchaeus,” she said, half to herself. 

Ezra made a soft noise, and she looked back up. 

“Zacchaeus climbed a sycamore tree to get a better view of the Lord,” said Ruth, grinning up at her charge. “I’m thinking it was a missed opportunity.”

Ezra beamed down at her, his grin so wide it wiggled his ears. 

“I’m off,” she said. “If you ever decide to return to earth, you know where to find me.”

Ruth headed down the hard-packed road, ducking around wagons and teams of men carrying doors, trunks, and supplies. As she’d guessed, Louise was in her office, wrapped in a wide apron, a greasy wrench in her hand. 

“Oh, it’s you,” she said, looking over the partially disassembled news press. “I’d hug you, but I’m filthy.”

“You look lovely,” said Ruth, and it was true. Her cheeks were pink from the effort, and she looked the most… alive when faced with a challenge. “Do you need any help?”

Louise wiped her hands on her apron, leaving inky stripes behind. “My desk is cleared out, but I haven’t gotten to my own things yet.

It was endearingly Louise. Business first, personal effects later. “Do you use a trunk or valise?” Ruth asked, stepping into the back where Louise’s cot was set up. “Trunk!” Louise called. “Just toss whatever you can in there.”

Like she’d do that. Meticulously, enjoying the rhythm of the work, Ruth set to folding dresses and aprons, wrapping Louise’s wash basin and pitcher in her bedding, and disassembling the cot. As expected, the contents of Louise’s bedroom fit  _ exactly  _ into the heavy trunk. Her friend was nothing if not precise. 

“Finished,” she announced, using both hands to drag the trunk backwards into the main portion of the office. 

“Thank you,” said Louise, placing pieces of her press into straw-padded boxes. “I-”

Footsteps sounded outside, and one of the walking bosses ducked into the office. “We’re ready to get you movin’, Miss Ellison.”

“Alright,” she said, looking up from her work. “The trunk and desk are ready to go. I’ll be done with this, soon.”

“Is there anything else I can help you with?” Ruth asked as two men took the trunk from her. 

“No, but thank you,” said Louise. “This will be our last stop before Cheyenne. When we make camp, I’ll have you and Ezra over for dinner.”

“Alright,” said Ruth. She’d learned to do many things, but cook well was not one of them. “I appreciate it.”

“Least I can do,” said Louise, and then she blew Ruth a kiss with a wink. 

Ezra wasn’t up in the support beams when Ruth got back to the church. He wasn’t at the paddocks or the general store. Ruth was beginning to get hot and sweaty and worried when she finally caught sight of him waving to her from the window of the main rail engine. 

“Ezra!” she called, hiking up her skirts to scurry over to the tracks. “You can’t play in there.”

The new engineer, Mr. Delaney, peered out of the window at her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t aware that this little gentleman had anywhere to be.”

“He- he didn’t,” said Ruth.

“I found him climbing the outside of the engine,” said Mr. Delaney, and Ruth clenched her fists and refused to think of what a tragedy  _ that  _ could have been. Ezra was safe, and the new Chief Engineer didn’t seem like a dangerous man. Mr. Delaney continued, “I thought I’d show him how things work. That way, if he decides to climb the engine again, he’ll know that his face might be burned off by live steam.”

It was said in such a cheery tone, and with both Mr. Delaney and Ezra smiling at her, that Ruth blinked. “But- what?”

“I don’t think he’ll be climbing the train again, will you?” Delaney asked. 

Ezra shook his head, a little smile toying with his lips. 

“Well, thank you for watching out for him,” said Ruth, taking Ezra’s hand in hers. “We’d best be getting back.”

“It was a pleasure to meet you, Mrs…?”

“Miss Cole,” said Ruth. “And this is Ezra.”

As soon as they were out of earshot of the tracks Ruth let loose with the scolds. “I don’t tell you not to climb because I want to spoil your fun,” she said. “It’s because I don’t want you to get hurt. Mr. Delaney was right: the railroad is a dangerous place for a little boy. You could have-”

“Ain’t too little,” said a familiar drawling voice. Ruth stopped to look back, and found Cullen on the high seat of a wagon, with a short chestnut gelding ponying behind. “Reckon he’s old enough to ride.”

Ezra nodded so enthusiastically his hat nearly slipped off the back of his head. 

“He can ride in the wagon-”

Ezra tugged on her hand, and Ruth looked down into his pleading expression. 

“Horses gotta get to the next stop somehow. May as well earn their keep, and it ain’t too early to learn to ride. It’ll come in handy someday.”

Ruth knew Cullen was right. “You’ll keep an eye on him?”

“Sure,” said Cullen easily. “We both will.” He put on the wheel break and jumped down, landing lightly. He’d come by to bring her biscuits or check on Ezra a few times since the cholera outbreak, and Ruth had missed him in between. He was steady; steady and sure in a way that Ruth had daydreamed over for most of her life. There was a difference between  _ easy  _ and  _ steady,  _ she’d decided. An easy-going man was quiet inside as well as outside. A steady man always showed up. 

Cullen always showed up. 

He stepped closer; close enough that she had to tilt her head back to look him in the eyes. “Look around, Miss Ruth,” he told her. “Church is still up.”

He was right. In her rush to find Ezra, and then in their conversation with Mr. Delaney, Ruth hadn’t been paying attention to the wagons rolling out of town. The shops had gone, and the office, and the corrals and tents and whorehouse. The only thing left was a half-dismantled saloon and her church, sides-up. 

“Last call,” he murmured, a little smirk on his face. 

“You remembered,” she said.

He raised an eyebrow. “Ain’t hard, Miss Ruth. Things you say got a way of sticking.”

_ What a lovely fib.  _

As Ruth watched, her trunks were placed in the wagon, the canvas of her tent was bundled on top, and the support poles were put into the final wagon, along with the saloon. It was mid-morning, and Hell On Wheels was a town comprised of nothing but ghosts. 

Cullen gave Ezra a boost onto the short horse, which Ezra immediately cued into a shuffling trot. 

“Can’t leave without our preacher,” said Cullen, and then he’d plunked her bodily into the high seat of the wagon. 

She could stiffen up, could tell him that she was perfectly capable of climbing in a wagon and taking care of her charge and seeing her to her church. She almost did snap at him, but… how often had someone done this for her? Something thoughtful and kind with no ulterior motive of their own? Wasn’t this what Ruth had wanted for as long as she could remember? 

_ A few drops of love,  _ she’d told her father. Cullen gave her more than that, steadily wearing her down the way a river wears rocks. It wasn’t the romantic love she pined for when the nights were long and cold, but it was… there. Present, and real. 

They set off after the slow-moving train of wagons and horses shuffling across the prairie. It would take two days for the wagons to travel the nearly fifty miles of rail the men had constructed. Tonight camp would be even more rough than usual: open fires, pallets in the grass, and sentries posted at the edges for bandits or angry Lakota. 

It was a good day to travel; so much better than the downpour they’d all suffered through on the Nebraska plains. The sky was clear and blue overhead, and the sun was warm on her face. Cullen was a sturdy bulkhead against the rocking of the wagon, and up ahead Ezra was toying with a patient horse’s reins. God clothed the lilies of the field: she would save tomorrow’s troubles for tomorrow. 

Ezra rode on his own until the sun was past the zenith and the shadows were growing long. “Sore?” Cullen asked when the boy dropped back to ride beside the wagon. 

He nodded and looked down at his fingers. 

“Well, c’mon, then.” said Cullen, jerking his head towards the folded canvas in the back of the wagon. 

Ruth watched in fascination and horror as Ezra grinned, tossed one leg over the moving horse’s head, and jumped into the wagon, the reins still in his hand. 

“Sit in the back, and make sure he don’t get tangled,” said Cullen. 

Ruth swallowed. “You’re- you’re quite comfortable with horses, aren’t you?” she asked. 

“Yep,” said Cullen. “Grew up with ‘em. Being able to ride and tend a horse? One of the best skills a man can have. The Union papers, they’d say that the only reason the South kept winning battles is because we were demons in the saddle. It weren’t the only reason, but it sure helped.”

Ruth turned to check on Ezra, and she saw him wedged against the canvas, looking at the back of Cullen’s head in rapt attention. Maybe he wouldn’t have a father, she thought, but he didn’t lack for a man to look up to. 

Cullen whiled away the rest of the afternoon telling them stories about his family as a boy. He’d had a pony named Banshee, who had (apparently) been able to unlatch his own stall door. It was the most Ruth had ever heard Cullen talk about himself, and he seemed younger, less troubled. 

He’d lost so much, these last years. So had Ruth. 

The shadows were long when they stopped for the night, and the temperature had already begun to drop. Cullen lifted Ruth down from the wagon and all she could think about were the size of his hands on her. They wrapped nearly all the way around her waist, and she wondered if his spread fingers could span her belly from ribs to hip bone. Before she’d recovered from his handling he was hefting Ezra, telling the boy to untack the horses, and walking away. 

That was alright; it was fine. She and Ezra would be just fine, the two of them. He saw to the horses as asked, and she dug in the top of her trunk for the few pieces of cookware she owned. She’d saved some biscuits for the journey, but she could heat up some oats into a porridge. 

“I’m going to the stream,” she told Ezra as the light began to fade. “Will you please find the blankets and put them underneath the wagon?

He nodded, good-natured and accepting, and she wondered again what his story was. Who was he, and what had happened to the people who had raised him?

Ruth fetched the water, and when she returned it was to find Cullen lighting a little pile of coals, with red beans soaking in a pot of water. Her traitorous heart shouldn’t have lifted the way it did. 

_ He’s being neighborly,  _ she told herself.  _ And a good Christian.  _

She sat the bucket down and lowered herself to the grass by Ezra, who was poking at the fire with a stick. Once again, Cullen didn’t seem worried. 

“I thought you’d headed off to find your things,” she told him. 

“I went off to find dinner,” he told her. “Unless you can live just on them prayers?”

It was a gentle tease; the setting sun reflected in those pale grey eyes and pooled in the dimples of his cheek. 

They ate. The light faded quickly, and so did their energy. Ezra was the first to wash his face and crawl under the wagon to the pallet he’d unrolled there. Ruth wandered out of camp and down a rise, finding a place that was as quiet as any to do her business before turning in herself. 

“It alright if I stay?” asked Cullen. “Men should be too tired to get up to much tonight, but…”

“It’s fine,” said Ruth, splashing water on her face. “I… I appreciated the company today.”  _ What a weak word for it; what an understatement for the magnitude of her feelings.  _

Cullen nodded. “We’re friends, Ruth.” 

How simple he made it sound.

Ruth crawled under the wagon to her blankets. Ezra was already fast asleep, his lips parted slightly, mumbling as he dreamed. (How old would her baby be, if he’d lived? Eleven months? A year? Would he have called her  _ mama  _ yet?)

Cullen banked the fire as Ruth unlaced her boots and slid under her blankets. Then, in a move that nearly made Ruth gasp, he unrolled his own pallet right next to hers. Only the spoked wheels of the wagon separated them from each other: he was close enough to reach out and touch. 

She closed her eyes and recited the fifty fifth Psalm. 

_ Cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous be shaken. But you, God, will bring down the wicked into the pit of decay; the bloodthirsty and deceitful will not live out half their days. But as for me, I trust in you. _

She was wicked, striving for righteousness. She knew that. To want a man like this, outside of marriage? Matthew had written that the person who lusts has already committed adultery in their heart. But then, what of the Song of Solomon? It made the act of love between a man and a woman seem more beautiful than anything. 

This was a question she’d been grappling with since she’d been old enough to read her verses. Why had god made men and women so beautiful and in his image? Why were adulterous women to be stoned to death, but not men? The Bible had been written by men, and recorded by those who didn’t comprehend His grace.

Cullen had treated her with more respect than any other man had in her entire life.  _ Ever.  _ He was more worthy of respect than her father had been, though the Bible commanded only that her parents be respected and obeyed. 

Ruth tipped her head to the side, studying Cullen’s profile through the spokes of the heavy wooden wheel. His eyes were open, and one hand rested on his chest. It looked like he was studying the stars, or thinking deeply to himself. 

Ruth closed her eyes again. She knew she loved him, knew she wanted him, and knew she didn’t regret it. 

She’d see it as a gift, she decided. And the Bible had a lot to say about those who squandered their gifts. 

Slowly, like the opening of a morning bloom, Ruth inched her hand out from under the covers and laid it, palm-up, in the space between their bodies. 

Cullen didn’t look at her; didn’t say a word. He only closed his fingers around hers, warm and sure, and didn’t let go.

* * *

_ Heaven could be translated as home.  _

It was an odd thought, but all of her thoughts were odd now. Wasn’t it strange that a corpse could think at all?

Maybe heaven was her real home, but then what did that make this life? This town? These people she would never see again? Wasn’t this her home too?

If heaven was home, and hell was ...something else, what did that make this place? This place full of so many wonderful, beautiful things? The place where god’s creatures lived?

(Maybe, said a small, still voice. Maybe that’s why she was so eager to go: this place wasn’t her home. Not any more.)

~~~

She’d wanted a kiss. On step six Ruth accepted that no kiss would be forthcoming. 

(She’d almost asked Louise. She wished that she’d asked Louise, her first and dearest friend.)

* * *

Rain poured down in sheets. The road of the new town, which only hours ago had been softly flattened grass, ran to mud. The roofing canvas of the church had been lashed down by an intense, focused group of men on ladders before they’d continued down the road. Ruth and Cullen had been left to attach the wall weights and to lash the canvas walls to the upright supports while Ezra set up their cots and found the cookware.

“Get inside!” Cullen yelled over a long roll of thunder. “I got this!”

Ruth ignored him, only focusing on the heavy lead weights in the crate at her feet. They held the canvas sides of the tent tight to the grass, preventing gusts of wind from catching the canvas like a sail and topping the whole church. She was already soaked to the bone, and she’d rest easier knowing everything was in place. 

Cullen hammered heavy stakes into the ground, the cotton of his shirt clinging to the ropey muscles of his shoulders and back, and Ruth moved into the next weight, and then the next. She wasn’t sure how long they were out there together, shouting over the wind and rain. It was… elemental, Ruth supposed. The two of them against the elements; little people standing up to the storm and determined to win. 

When they finally stumbled into the deep gloom of the barren church tent they were both soaked to the bone, and Ruth’s teeth were chattering. 

“Get dried off,” Cullen told her, taking her by the shoulders and steering her back towards her bedroom. “Check on the boy. I’ll be back.”

“But-”

He nodded at her and walked out into the storm. For a moment Ruth simply watched him: he didn’t scurry, didn’t duck his head and hunch his shoulders. No, Cullen Bohannon walked out into the storm as confidently as he had any other railroad disaster. 

Ruth shivered her way into the back, gingerly using her toes to feel for unopened crates and trunks. Ezra hadn’t lit any of the lanterns, and the little bit of daylight that had remained when they stopped for the day had faded into the darkness of the storm. 

“Ezra?” Ruth whispered. 

No response. 

She groped around on the floor before finding the lantern. A box of matches had been set in the base, and the tiny flame blazed when Ruth struck the match. 

In the glow of the lantern she could see that Ezra had set up both of their cots as asked. The blankets were crooked but unrolled, and he was curled blissfully on his own. Ruth smiled and took one of the spare blankets from her own bed to cover him. He was such a good boy. His parents  _ couldn’t  _ have abandoned him; who would leave their child alone in the wilderness? 

It didn’t matter now, she decided. God had given him to  _ her,  _ and she would be worthy of that gift. 

Quickly, trying to keep her chattering teeth from clacking together too loudly, she peeled out of her wet things and dug out her oldest, loosest dress, one faded nearly colorless from countless washings, a dress with hints of blue at the cuffs and hem where she’d let it out as she grew. It was soft and comfortable, and she was already soaking wet. Over the dress she draped a towel, and then carefully began to unpin her hair. It was heavy like this, long and soaking and beginning to curl over her temples. 

She’d comb her hair, say her prayers, and sleep. She was too tired for anything else. 

“Ruth?”

It was a soft whisper. 

“Cullen?”

She carried the lantern and the comb into the main part of the church. 

“Hey,” he said, smiling at her. His hair was plastered to his head, water dripped from his beard, and his clothes looked like they’d melted onto him. He was soaked, and he was beautiful. 

“You didn’t need to come back,” she whispered. 

“I know,” he said. “But this is ‘bout the only place in town that ain’t wet. Hope you don’t mind.” 

“Thanks to you,” said Ruth, fiddling with the end of her hair. Propriety was something with which Hell On Wheels only had a passing acquaintance, but no man had ever seen her with her hair down before. 

Cullen shrugged. “You mind if I, ah-” He gestured to the oiled leather of his saddle bags. “Had ‘em in with Mickey’s stuff, so they ain’t too wet.”

“Oh- yes, please,” said Ruth, gesturing to the sleeping space. “Take the lantern.”

Though he was still in his boots, Cullen prowled off into the tent on silent feet. 

There was a man undressing in her bedroom. Ruth combed her hair and looked out at the rain, trying to ignore the rustling from within.  _ There was a man in her bedroom.  _

She’d been intimate with Joseph, intimate enough to conceive a child. They’d both been… hurting, she decided. Hurting, and feeling alone in a sea of strange people in a strange land. It had been easy to think that because they were both outsiders to Hell On Wheels, that made them the same. 

Try as she might, Ruth wasn’t ashamed of her relationship with Joseph. She only wished she’d been able to tell, then, that shared loneliness wasn’t the same as love. 

This… thing she felt for Cullen? It was so much bigger than that. It was admiration, it was a feeling of safety, it was respect and exasperation and understanding. 

As though her thoughts had summoned him, Cullen padded back out into the main part of the tent carrying two lit lanterns. His hair had been pushed back from his face, which was missing it’s usual layer of worry and dust. He was only in a clean white shirt, suspenders, dark canvas pants, and thrice-darned socks. It was ...disturbingly domestic, and Ruth hoped he couldn’t see her blush. 

“I hope everyone’s safe,” said Ruth, looking out into the night. 

“Most men are in the bunk cars, the saloon, or the railroad office,” said Cullen. “They’ll be fine.”

“Why’d you come back?” Ruth asked, glancing up at his profile. She knew she was blushing, but she wanted an answer: Ruth could be accused of all kinds of sins, but cowardice wasn’t one of them. She’d survived her childhood, she’d followed her father to Hell on Wheels, and then she’d followed the railroad ever onward. Timid, shy, and awkward she may be, but never let it be said that she surrendered easily. 

Cullen reached out and gently twined the curling end of her braid around his finger. “Little thing like you?” he said. “Had to make sure you didn’t blow away and beat me to California.”

Ruth smiled at him, trying to ignore how close his fingers were to the upper curve of her breast. Cullen, for all his rough edges, wasn’t a man to take advantage. It was Ruth who might have a problem controlling herself. 

“I’m sturdier than people think,” she said, stepping back from temptation. 

He nodded, lips quirked in a crooked smile. “Yes ma’am, you surely are.”

They ended up sitting on the floor of the empty church tent near the door, as far from Ezra as they could be, but far enough inside to avoid the driving rain. The glow of the lanterns was homey, and so side by side they watched lightning flash outside, illuminating the rolling profile of the hills and the jagged shape of the train engine where it stood on the tracks. 

“Used to love storms,” said Cullen. “One more year between me and disaster when I was on the farm. Then in the war, it meant a day without marching, usually. Definitely a day without a battle.”

“Why?” asked Ruth, remembering her own father, how he’d ride off in storms or snow or the dead of night to answer his violent god’s call. Rain wouldn’t have stopped him from warring with slave owners. 

Cullen shrugged. “Ain’t gentlemanly, I guess. No fun trying to stab a man who’s falling over himself in mud. Least, that was how it was at first.”

“I hated storms,” said Ruth quietly. “At night, I’d wonder if this would be the time that god broke his promise to us and drowned all the sinners from the world. And during the day, it meant we were stuck inside memorizing verses, or mending. I hated mending,” she confessed. 

Cullen leaned back, bracing himself on his palms with his legs stretched out in front of him. Lightning cracked again, filling the night with the sharp, clean smell of burnt air. 

“Thought that was Noah’s whole story,” he said. “That god wasn’t going to flood the world again.”

Ruth fiddled with a seam of her skirt. “He ...he did make that promise,” she said. “I understand that now. But then, when my own father was so quick to… well, you met him,” she said simply. “It was easy to assume that one day god would lose his patience, too.”

“Hope not,” said Cullen shortly. “Cause I ain’t got a chance.”

Ruth reached out, taking his heavy hand in hers. “You’re not unforgivable,” she said quietly. 

Cullen gently untangled his fingers and reached into his pocket, pulling out a flask. He went to unscrew the cap before looking at her guiltily, then out at the storm. 

That little gesture, that hint of uncertainty from the man who daily dared fate and the plains themselves to stop him from building the road- it gave her hope. 

Maybe he was a little bit shy, too. 

Ruth took the flask from his fingers, unscrewed the cap, and took a quick gulp of the contents. It burned, just as Louise’s did, and seared its way down her throat to form a warm little puddle beneath her breastbone. 

Ruth passed the flask back. Cullen blinked at her, and then a slow grin stretched over his face, making his eyes crinkle and his dimples flash. “Look at you,” he said softly before taking a swig from the flask himself. “Just look at you.”

“I’m no saint, Cullen,” said Ruth. “And I think- Louise helped me see that I don’t need to pretend to be one.”

“Way I see it,” said Cullen, “Saints aren’t all that interesting. People who ain’t never struggled shouldn’t tell everyone else how to be good. Choices a man- or lady,” he added, glancing at her again. “Choices somebody makes, that’s what makes them interesting. You’re the lady who decided to preach in Hell On Wheels. Takes a special kind of grit to do that. And we need that, Ruth.”

He studied her for a moment before reaching out and brushing the back of his knuckles over her cheek. “We don’t need you to be perfect. We just need you to be here.”

Ruth turned to look out of the tent and then tightly closed her eyes, trying to hold the tears inside. It was stupid, so stupid, that  _ this  _ was when she chose to cry. Someone said something so nice; someone she respected ( _ loved _ ) had given her this Balm of Gilead, and her reaction was to  _ cry.  _

“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice thick. “It’s just- I don’t-”

How did she explain it? How did she explain that when you were accustomed to living on only one drop of love, Cullen’s speech had been a cup running over?

His hand closed gently over her shoulder and she shuddered, still not turning to meet him. 

“Ruth- can I? Ah, hell,” he muttered, and then he was picking her up and tugging her into his lap, her face naturally finding a home in the hollow of his throat. It was so kind, so warm and unexpected, that it shocked her out of her tears. 

“Gotta be patient with us,” he said, and  _ oh,  _ Ruth could feel the rumble of his words in his chest, rolling through his rib-cage and into hers. “We may not say it, but this town needs its preacher. We need you, Miss Ruth.”

_ I need you.  _ It was on the tip of her tongue; the sentiment flooding through her:  _ I need you, I need you, I need you.  _ She wouldn’t embarrass herself any further by speaking it. She wouldn’t speak it, but she would do this:

Ruth clenched her fingers in his shirt, shifted in his lap, and kissed him. His lips were soft and tasted of whiskey and rain. His beard tickled, and he smelled like clean linen: all good, wonderful things. He was so warm against her, radiating enough heat to melt her good sense. It was a lovely kiss, gentle and slow, but then Cullen seemed to remember himself. 

“Wait-” he pulled back, his hands on her shoulder. “Ruth- I- you don’t gotta do this. It isn’t-”

“I know I don’t have to,” said Ruth, flustered and more than a little embarrassed. “But if you don’t want to-”

She shifted to climb off his lap. She’d heard that they needed missionaries in China; maybe that would be far enough away that she’d never have to think of this encounter again. 

Cullen’s fingers closed on her shoulder, and he leaned in to rest his forehead against her. “Never said I didn’t want to,” he said softly, and then he kissed her again. It was such a shockingly soft kiss from a man like Cullen: his lips feathered over hers, coaxing and tender, before his tongue dipped inside to taste her. 

His hands were a direct contrast to the lushness of his kisses. His right hand had fisted around her long braid, sharply tugging her head back to better present her face for his lips. His other arm was banded tightly around her back, but instead of feeling trapped Ruth felt hotly, deliciously wanted. 

She wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that, stringing kisses together like ties on the railroad track while the storm blew on outside. Eventually, though, they ended up in much the position they’d started: Ruth’s head balanced on Cullen’s shoulder with his palm stroking over her hair. 

“Cullen?” she whispered, listening as the gaps between peals of thunder grew longer and longer. 

“Hmm?”

“I’m glad you came back.”

“Me too, Ruth,” he told her, his voice warm in the darkness. “Me too.”


	3. Chapter 3

Regret was sadness turned inside for hurt you’d caused yourself to suffer. 

Ruth had a long list of regrets, but they didn’t matter anymore. She wouldn’t regret pouring her father that first drink. She didn’t regret teasing Betty Elliott in school, didn’t regret wishing away her poor dead baby, didn’t regret shooting Sidney Snow. 

The hardest to see go? She wouldn’t have to regret not taking Cullen for her own.

_ Halfway up the stairs. Halfway home. _

~~~

Cullen hadn’t been this shit-scared since some blood-soaked battle in Virginia. 

You’d be standing there in the trees, gun on your shoulder, and the whole time your body’d be screaming at you that you could leave, that this weren’t your fight, that ain’t nothing worth the kind of violence that was gonna be unleashed on that godforsaken field. 

And then you’d catch a gleam of a union bayonet. 

For one long, shining moment you’d be caught there, suspended between: on the inhale you could still turn back and save yourself. On the exhale you’d gain the conviction that comes with battle: a conviction to _ live; _live no matter what it took. 

He could get that fucking horse, get the girl, and ride the hell out of this horrible town. He could stay here, listening for the drop of the trapdoor. 

Or he could go to her. He could see this one last thing through. 

He inhaled-

* * *

After the long expanse of the plains and the low, crowded tent cities to which Ruth had become accustomed, Cheyenne felt crowded: tall and claustrophobic. The buildings were real, multi-storied hardwood structures not yet weathered by storms and time. The mountains loomed, towering over the landscape, a granite monument to God’s creation. 

“It’s funny, isn’t it,” said Louise, nudging Ruth with her shoulder. “First night in a town with buildings, and everyone is gathered in the street.

“It’s wonderful,” said Ruth. She and Louise were sitting on the railing of the Palmer Hotel porch, and dancers whirled in the street before them. A band was set up outside the saloon, and the streets were brightly lit by lanterns. The music was fast, the alcohol was plentiful, and spirits were high. 

They’d laid eight hundred miles of track since Omaha. Eight hundred miles of mud and flies and Indian attacks and death and sickness.

But also… eight hundred miles of seeing so many stars that no human mind could comprehend them. Eight hundred miles of brilliant sunrises and streams running fresh and clear. Eight hundred miles of people banding together against hardship, forming their own motley family, pushing back against the darkness. 

“Come on,” said Louise, hopping down from the railing and turning to face Ruth. “Dance with me.”

_ Why not? Why not dance with her first and best friend? _

“Alright,” she said, sliding to the ground and smoothing out her skirts. “But you have to lead.”

“Not a problem,” said Louise with a wink. “You know how to two-step?”

“Theoretically,” said Ruth. She hadn’t been given much opportunity to practice. 

She didn’t have to worry. Louise was an excellent dancer, and when Ruth missed a step they’d smile and laugh and keep going, enjoying the wonder of the night. Louise was agile and light, and this was so different from the few dances she’d had as a girl. It wasn’t just different because she was dancing with another woman, but also because… well, because she was making mistakes and _ didn’t care. _And it was fun. 

When the song drew to an end Louise and Ruth curtsied grandly to each other, giggling all the while. Ruth felt alive, and when the next song started Mickey snagged Louise and Mr. Delaney found Ruth and off they went again: feet stomping, lanterns swirling, and stars twinkling overhead. 

She danced with Mr. Durant and Mickey and Psalms. She danced with the stable boss, the walking boss, and the camp cook. The music kept playing and the partners kept stepping up, smiling at her and asking her to dance another. 

She lost count of how many dances she’d had when Cullen finally sought her out. His color was high, and his smile seemed ever-present. “Miss Ruth,” he said, tipping his hat. “Looked good out there.”

“Thank you,” said Ruth, taking another sip of the punch that Mrs. Palmer had handed her with a grin and a nudge. “You dance so well. Is there anything you aren’t good at?”

Cullen put his hands on her waist and boosted her back up onto the railing. “Couldn’t farm worth a damn,” he told her. “And can’t sit behind a desk for love or money.”

“Oh dear,” said Ruth, desert-dry. “How _ can _you go on with such failings.”

Cullen smiled up at her where she perched on the banister. “Now Miss Cole,” he said, and his drawl was thicker than ever, his vowels dripping whiskey. “It ain’t the night for scoldin’.”

“You’re right about that,” said Ruth, taking another gulp of the punch. “I’ll let it slide this time, Mr. Bohannon.”

He turned around to watch the dancing, his back braced on the railing and his shoulder pressed against her thigh. It was cozy to share this with him, bathed in the warm yellow light of the oil lantern overhead. 

“Caught your breath yet?” he asked when the song changed again. 

“Yes, but-” said Ruth. 

Too late. He’d taken the glass from her hand, plucked her off the railing, and spun her out into the street.

The whole of her dance with Cullen felt like a fall. He’d twirl her and she’d laugh, the sound unspooling like a ribbon behind her, and then he’d pull her back in again, never letting her get too far away. 

His closeness had her perpetually off-balance, but she wanted to get closer. She wanted his hands on her skin, wanted the smell of him on her body, wanted that grinning mouth on hers. He moved her easily, and all she needed to do was stay upright and follow the way a flower dances with the sun. 

“Enough,” she finally laughed, holding her palm over a stitch in her side. “Cullen, enough, I can’t breathe!”

“Fine,” he said, and slung his arm around her neck to snug her in close to his side. “Where’s the boy?”

“He was watching the musicians,” said Ruth, craning her neck. 

Cullen went up on his toes to look. “I see him,” he said. 

They skirted around the dancers, dodged those weaving with drink, and found Ezra leaning against the saloon wall, his eyes half open, his fingers still wrapped around a lump of cobbler. 

“Alright,” said Cullen, pulling a handkerchief out of his pocket and wrapping up the treat. “Up you get.”

Ruth tried to remember that he was picking up her _ child; _an overtired boy who should have sought his bed hours ago. She tried to remember that everyone was watching. She truly did attempt to not watch the way his trousers pulled so tight across his behind when he crouched, but-

But she looked anyway. 

Cullen stood back up easily, the drowsy boy slung over his shoulder and giggling merrily.

“Lead the way,” he said. 

Ruth did successfully resist the urge to take his hand as they wandered away from the brightness and noise. The opposite end of the street held the church, which still smelled like fresh-cut wood and whitewash inside. It was quiet, and Ruth hurried ahead of Cullen to find and light the candle she’d placed at her bedside. 

“There you go,” said Cullen, setting the boy down gently. 

“Wash up for bed,” said Ruth quietly. “Hands, teeth, face.”

Ezra scrunched up his nose and glared at her, but she waited, unmoved, until he was tidy. “Shall I say your prayers?” she asked. Cullen had slipped out, and she wasn’t surprised. He was as uncomfortable at prayer as Louise was. 

Ezra shook his head. Paul had written to pray without ceasing, so surely the private thoughts inside your head counted as prayers as well. “Alright,” said Ruth. “I’m here if you need me.”

Ezra closed his eyes and rolled onto his side, sighing as he relaxed into the cot. For a moment Ruth stood and soaked in the moment, this quiet end to a giddy, joyful day. There was a solid roof over her head tonight, and a well-pump to share in the middle of town. Her charge was cozy and safe in his bed, and she’d danced with the man she loved. 

It was more than she’d expected, but less than she wanted. Somehow, that was enough. 

When Ruth carried her candle into the main part of the church, Cullen was just a darker shadow lounged on the front bench. It always surprised her that he stayed; it was always a little jolt to her heart. 

“Is he out?” Cullen asked. 

“Yes,” whispered Ruth, turning a little to look into the vaults of the roof. She’d always found… if not serenity inside of a church, then she’d at least found a purpose. She wouldn’t only allow life to happen to her. She hadn’t allowed life to happen passively to her when her mother died, and she wouldn’t let simple momentum carry her along now. 

She took one step towards Cullen, and then another, inhibitions dropping away as she did. This was all life was, wasn’t it. A series of steps, one after the other, leading into the future. 

“Ruth,” said Cullen, his voice low. Ruth snugged herself between his knees, her hands finding his broad shoulders. 

That one word conveyed so much. It was a warning, a plea, a caress, a truth. 

Feeling both powerful and vulnerable, Ruth bend down to kiss Cullen, enjoying the scrape of his beard on her chin. 

“Ruth, sweetheart,” he said, his voice rough already. (The gentleness of his hands on her waist belied the sandpaper scrape of his words.) “Shouldn’t be like this.”

“Why?” Ruth whispered. “I want you and- and I think you want me.”

“Jesus, of course I want you, but- I’m trying to do it proper this time.”

Ruth didn’t argue with him. They were both too stubborn; bull-headed oxen pulling in opposite directions. Instead, she kissed him. 

She hadn’t had much experience with kissing. Her relationship with Joseph had been brief, and had been more… desperate than these kisses that joined her to Cullen. He acted like he could kiss her all day, shifting from her top lip to her bottom, and pinching her with his teeth just when she thought she could melt into the kiss like honey into a hot mug of tea. This close everything was amplified: the sound of his breath, the warmth of his skin on hers, the sound of her little whimpers echoing between them. 

She felt shivery, and couldn’t help the full body shudder than ran through her when Cullen cupped her breast. 

“Please,” she whispered, resting her forehead on his. _ It’ll be enough, _ she told herself. _ She’d have this memory to cling to, and his friendship, and it would be enough. _She’d steal these moments for herself, these drops of affection, and hoard them for a time when she was alone again.

His fingers clenched and unclenched on her hips, and Ruth felt herself go boneless again. There was something heady about Cullen’s attention. He was heavier than her, stronger than her; he’d killed men without hesitation, he could stitch a wound and clean big game, and yet with her… with her those hands were gentle, almost reverent. 

Ruth felt Cullen make his decision. His hands gripped her more tightly, and his face tipped up to look her in the eye. “I ain’t gonna risk a baby,” he told her. “And you aren’t gonna argue about it.”

“Alright,” she said, threading her fingers through his hair. “That’s- oh!”

Cullen had picked her up, hands tight around her waist, and crossed the front of the church in three long steps. 

“We can’t-”

He set her on the altar, _ he set her on the altar, _oh god they couldn’t-

The candle was guttering now, the light distant and red-tinged, and Cullen smirked down at her. “You said you weren’t gonna fuss about this.”

“But- but-” She could barely think through the arousal and _ sinfulbadwrong _coursing through her bloodstream. How wrong this would be, to sin on god’s place in the church. But god was everywhere and all seeing, wasn’t he? If this was a sin, it was a sin wherever she committed it.

Shadows played over Cullen as he looked down at her, those grey eyes steady. His body was warm where it pressed against hers, and the unyielding wood of the altar was cool against her back. Ruth looked at him-

-and then tugged his mouth down onto hers. What was sin? Sin was a rejection of god’s love, and only god could have sent a man this wonderful into her life. This man _ strove; _this man ached to move beyond the horrors and mistakes of his past, but when he failed (and he did fail) he accepted that as his lot, too. 

When Ruth angled her mouth on his and tasted the inside of his lips Cullen groaned, the sound pooling in the back of his throat like a purr.

He moved his mouth to the hinge of her jaw and nibbled there as his clever hands found the buttons of her dress and began to open them. He seemed to consume her: his mapped her throat and jaw with his lips, focusing his attention anywhere that elicited a shiver, and all the while his hands were sneakily undressing her, parting buttons and untying bows and shoving fabric away from her skin. 

Ruth, for her part, was content to close her eyes and absorb his every touch. When he pulled back from her she levered up on her elbows and opened her eyes again. His waistcoat was already on the floor, and he was shoving his suspenders down around his thighs. Ruth was left in only her corset and chemise, which she pushed off her breasts as Cullen let his shirt fall to the floor, too. 

He stepped between her legs again and slid his hands along her thighs, rucking up the hem of her chemise as he went. “Ezra’s sleeping,” he reminded her with a playful, smiling kiss on the lips. “So keep it down.”

She didn’t have a chance to reply. He’d swung her thighs over his shoulders, pulling her hips off the table, and while she was trying to find her balance he’d cupped her behind in his hands and set his mouth to her cunny. 

Ruth hadn’t experienced a man’s mouth before; it had never occurred to her that it was done. It was- god in heaven, she didn’t know what to think. Maybe she wasn’t thinking at all. His mouth felt _ hot, _like the molten steel in the blacksmith’s forge. He was holding her hips up off the table, and the muscles in her belly were tense and quivering in an attempt to hold herself up but also in the sudden, white-hot burst of arousal coursing through her system. The kisses and caresses had been a slow, banked heat, but this? This was transformation. 

Ruth tipped her head up to look down the length of her body at Cullen. His eyes flicked open and she could tell, even though his mouth was obscured, that he was smiling at her. The sight of him was too much: his finger-mussed hair, the satisfied crinkles at the corners of his eyes, the paleness of her legs resting against the weathered, tan skin of his face. 

She let her head fall back, whimpering, her fingers hooked around the edge of the altar. It was higher than the average table, and hit Cullen in the center of his sternum. With his elbows resting on the smooth surface and her hips cupped in his hands, he hardly had to bend his head at all.

He drove her higher, his tongue flat against her clitoris and stroking rhythmically, and Ruth was floating somewhere near the ceiling, all self-consciousness and worry driven away by the _ love _of this act, the gift that this was, the wonder of the pleasure washing through her veins. 

“You gotta be quiet, sweetheart,” Cullen scolded, pressing a kiss to her inner thigh and peeking up at her. “Gonna wake up Ezra.”

Ruth nodded and groped for the top of his head, trying to shove him back into place. “I will, I’ll be quiet,” she told him. 

Laughing, he returned to his work. 

The interruption did nothing to dull the need thrumming through Ruth like a drumbeat. She was even hungrier for the pause, her thighs quaking and her cunt clenching in empty denial. 

“Shh,” Cullen was saying, and _ god, _she could cry, why was he stopping, why was he lowering her legs to the altar and-

_ Oh. _

He repositioned them, shoving her back on the table top so that her head was tipped over the far edge, exposing her throat. Cullen bent so that his chest was lying along the top of the altar with her, and then he drew her thighs over his shoulders again. He didn’t have to hold her up this way, which left one hand free to slide two fingers inside her and _ god! _ , _ oh, oh, oh, _it left one of his hands free to snake up her body and cover her mouth.

Something about that connection broke her and left Ruth bucking against his face. That hand on her mouth completed some kind of unit: he was worshipping her but dominating her, forcing her to breathe through her nose in heavy pants while her lips tasted the salt of his skin. She was the revered and the defiled, and that was something beautiful and holy all in itself. They’d chosen this, this hazy grey place where they came together. Sinner and saint were human labels, and neither applied to them here. This place, this joining, was a point beyond right and wrong and everything else in the outside world. 

This was for them. This love, this window in time, was theirs. 

She came apart with a smothered cry, her back bowing off the wood of the altar, her legs trembling, her mind awash in pleasure and awe. 

As she still trembled Cullen turned his head, resting his cheek on her thigh, and swiped his fingers through her sex-soaked folds. She couldn’t see, not from her splayed position on the table top, but it was easy to track Cullen’s movements: trousers loosened, cock grasped, pleasure achieved in a few desperate, short strokes. 

She’d repay him one day, would take him apart in a display of the love and admiration that neither of them had given voice. But tonight… she was perfect. No doubt, no guilt, only bone-deep contentment that was nearly a holy enlightened state all by itself. 

“I’d never- I didn’t know about that,” she whispered when Cullen braced himself over her, looking down at her sprawl with an amused, crooked little smile. 

He raised an eyebrow. “You been missing out,” he told her. 

“I was,” she agreed quietly, sitting up and pulling Cullen towards her. “Thank you,” she told him. He made a face and she pressed closer, wrapping her arms around his waist and resting her cheek over his heart. “I know you don’t want to hear it. But I’m thankful for you, Cullen Bohannon.”

Delicately, tentative in a way that his touches hadn’t been before, Cullen stroked his hand down her hair, stopping to cup the name of her neck. 

“Don’t know what I’d do without you, Ruth,” said Cullen, his chest rumbling into her ear as he spoke. 

It wasn’t _ I love you. _But it was close. In the gentle darkness of the church, Ruth closed her eyes and prayed to the rhythm of his heartbeat.

* * *

She’d never have children. At some point she’d accepted it; accepted that her congregation would be her children in the eyes of the lord. The Lord had given, and the Lord had taken away, and the whole time she’d carried that little being she’d been more concerned with her pride than the gift she had been given. 

And then Ezra had come to her and he had been _ hers; _he had been hers as nothing else had ever been or would ever be. When he came into her life she finally understood, more than she had ever thought possible, why people would sin. Her father he’s loved his bottle and his glory more than he had the Lord. In the end, Ruth had felt the same way about Ezra.

She’d have done anything for the welfare of her boy. (And in the end, she had.)

* * *

If not for the candle, Ruth would have lost all sense of time. Bedside vigils did that: they reduced you down to the next spoonful of tea, or the next headache powder, or the next lunge for the chamberpot. Minutes and hours didn’t matter as long as the patient hung on- another few breaths, a few more heartbeats, just a little more ragged sleep. 

The candle burned down, steadily and bright, Ruth’s vigilant companion against the darkness. It was was one of the tall, pure-white tapers Ruth bought for the church altar; the flame representing the spirit of the lord. In her room Ruth used cheap oil in her lanterns, or the slightly pungent yellow candles with less beeswax and more tallow. But tonight the lord-candle was with her. Donations had been slow coming into the church of late, and of those donations Ruth took only forty percent for herself. The majority went to god, and so she had to borrow god’s candles. 

Ezra moaned a little and Ruth’s bobbing head snapped up, waiting to see if he’d fully rouse. “You’re alright,” she told him quietly. “You’re safe.” She picked the bowl of now-lukewarm water off the nightstand, wrung out the scrap of flannel, and laid it over Ezra’s forehead. 

Quiet footfalls echoed in the outer part of the church and Ruth pushed to her feet. “Hello?” she whispered, peeking out through the curtain that separated the spaces. 

Cullen stood just on the other side of the divider, his hat in one hand and a lunch pail in the other. “Hey,” he said softly. “Ezra still sick?”

Ruth glanced back and saw that Ezra was still dozing. She stepped back, admitting Cullen into the bedroom. “His fever spiked again this evening,” she said. “There’s nothing much else I can do.”

Cullen set the pail on her little table and began pulling out items. “Had the cook at the hotel make up some bone broth,” he said. “My nanny swore by it.” The next thing to appear in his hand was a paper packet of ground willow bark, which was followed by a book. 

“Know you’re mighty fond of the Bible,” he said. “But it ain’t gonna keep a sick boy entertained for long.”

Ruth took the book from him and stroked her fingertips along the cover. The Mission in Kansas hadn’t allowed novels. They said the stories gloried in the sins of humanity. 

“Thank you,” said Ruth, looking into Cullen’s face. “Thank you so much.”

“Ain’t done yet.” From his pocket he took one last item: half a sandwich wrapped in heavy butcher’s paper. She could already smell egg and the spice of peppery wild lettuce. 

“I’m not hungry,” she said quietly. 

Cullen gave her a long look, those mirror-bright eyes kind but assessing. “Hmm. I’m gonna go get some fresh water. Be back in a bit.”

He took the empty bucket by the door and disappeared into the dark. Once she wasn’t dizzied by his sudden appearance, Ruth wondered why Cullen was wandering around so late scrounging up supplies for her. Sunrise would come early tomorrow, and with it the crews would head out of Laramie, pressing ever further west. 

She retook her chair, and soon Cullen was back with a cold bucket of water. 

“Thank you,” she whispered, brushing her hand down his sleeve. “You didn’t have to do this.”

He shot her a look that spoke volumes: a scolding, a promise, and amused affection. Instead of replying, he picked up her little cot, walked it towards Ezra’s, and set it there, leaving only a foot or so of space between. 

“Sit,” he told her. When she didn’t comply he picked her up and set her on it, like it not. Before she could protest he sat beside her, both of them looking at Ezra’s too-pale, sweat-dampened form. 

“When he’d come down with it?” Cullen asked. 

“Yesterday afternoon,” said Ruth. It felt like yesterday had been miles ago. “I was fussing at him for not doing his chores, and then- I felt so guilty,” she said, trying to fight back tears of exhaustion. She knew it wasn’t her fault, that she hadn’t brought the sickness on him, but she regretted it all the same. “And then the fever spiked last night, just like today.”

“You get any sleep?” asked Cullen. 

“Maybe,” said Ruth. “This morning he seemed better, and we both slept a little.”

And then he’d been unable to keep down his lunch, and they’d fought the fever all afternoon. As of sunset tonight, the fever was winning. To give herself something to do, Ruth threw out the warmed water and poured fresh into her bowl. Once a cooled cloth was back across Ezra’s skin, she and Cullen were left in silence again. 

“I didn’t know what to do with him at first,” she said, the words falling from her like unbidden tears. “You brought him, and then you left, and I- I didn’t know what to do. I’ve never been with children, and he was so… queer. He wouldn’t stop staring at me, and he never tried to answer any of my questions. I’m still not sure if he knows his letters, but I catch him playing with the type in Louise’s shop.”

Cullen didn’t say anything. It was one of her favorite things about him: when she’s been grieving for her father, he’d shown up and listened, respectfully, as she cried. When a funeral was held, he showed up, hat in hand. Now, when Ezra was sick and Ruth was beyond herself in fear and exhaustion and regret, he showed up. Not judging, not bullying. Just _ present. _

He stroked her back, up and down, up and down, and maybe it was that hypnotic touch that coaxed the rest out. 

“He kept breaking things, or hiding them away from me, like- like a little mockingbird,” she said. “And I kept wondering if you’d come back and take him.”

This was her greatest sin. Telling Cullen, _ in front of a sleeping Ezra, _how she’d resented the odd little boy’s presence. This was the most unchristian thing she’d done; of all her faults, this was the worst. “I blamed you, too,” she said, hiccuping a choked laugh. She was crying, wasn’t she. She’d hadn’t noticed when it had started. “You brought him here, and turned my world upside down, and then just- just rode away!”

Cullen didn’t pull away from her. He reached into his pocket, produced a clean linen handkerchief, and pressed it into her hand. “Ruth,” he said quietly. “That’s being a parent.”

“No,” said Ruth, holding the cloth to her eyes. It smelled like him: like fresh air and salt and the cedar chips he kept in his trunk. “No, mothers love their babies.”

_ And she’d been given two. She’d been given two children to love, and had rejected them both. _Maybe she was broken inside. Maybe she was missing something other women had, some ability to gracefully accept illogical love of a child. 

“I can’t tell you what it’s like for everybody,” said Cullen slowly, as the guttering candle flame made their shadows jump and leer on the wall. “But it ain’t easy, having any kind of baby.”

Ruth stilled, and Cullen’s hand stopped at her nape to rub there, the tense muscles bracketing her spine slowly relaxing under the weight of his calloused fingers. 

“When Mary had William I was… I knew things were gonna change. But you aren’t ready for it, you can’t be, I think. There was one night, when William was colicky, and all three of us were crying. The baby wouldn’t eat, Mary was out of her mind, just tired and hurting, and there I am, crying too, feelin’ like the worst kind of failure. She wouldn’t let us have a nanny in,” he explained, almost as an afterthought. “Said no other woman would have the raising of her baby.”

“What happened?” asked Ruth, picturing the scene. She’d never have imagined that Cullen would cry over a fussy baby. He seemed… so confident, so unflappable. Maybe he wasn’t always, though. Maybe that’s something war teaches you. 

Cullen shrugged. “Mary said she wished she’d never met me, never married me, and never had my baby.”

“What?” Ruth looked at him wide-eyed. “I’m sure she didn’t mean it, Cullen I’m-”

He huffed a silent laugh. “She meant it. Maybe not for long, but that night, lord. I took the baby and we walked. Out to the fields, to the barn, up and down and up and down. He fell asleep about sunrise, and I came back and found Mary sleeping, too. We all must have been down until midday.”

Ruth scooted closer and leaned against him. Maybe he no longer mourned for the life he’d lost, but she ached for him. He was a good man, had likely always been a good man. (_ Good men show up. _)

“Point I’m trying to make,” he said slowly, wrapping her in closer. “Is that any kid comes along, and it messes up your plans. You’re allowed to resent it.”

Ruth had never seen that. She’d only helped with the births, or the deaths, or those liminal spaces in between. She hadn’t known that new mothers could rail at their babies, or curse the men who’d put them there. She hadn’t known that those serene, Madonna mothers could hate change, too. 

“Thank you,” she whispered, reaching for his hand. It was an anchor, those warm fingers around her own. “Do you miss it?”

He half-shrugged again, careful not to jar her where she used him as a pillow. “Sometimes. I miss the peace of it, but- god help me, even on the battlefield I never missed standing behind a mule.”

He shifted, pivoting them so that Ruth was laid down against her pillows, her eyes trained on Ezra’s profile, her feet in Cullen’s lap. 

“They asked me to stay,” Ruth whispered. “Me and Louise. Stay here, have a home, make… a place.”

“Yeah?”

She felt the muscles in his stomach tense. Ruth didn’t turn to look at him. The candle was down to a nub, now, casting red-tinged shadows into the hollows of Ezra’s pointed little face. “I was going to say no. But- but then Ezra got sick. Is that what’s best for him? He could stay here and go to school. Maybe more people with children his age would come. I’m supposed to think about him, now. We’re a little family.”

Cullen sighed, low and deep. “You’ll do the right thing, Ruth,” he said. “You always do.”

He shouldn’t have so much faith in her. She shouldn’t like it so much. 

“I want to see California,” she whispered, holding her eyes open through sheer will alone. “I want to see if Micky builds his perfect bar; I want to see Louise report the transcontinental race. These people are my family, too.”

“Still your family,” Cullen whispered. “Even if you stay. That’s how family works.”

Ruth fell asleep, tired of fighting her worry and fear and exhaustion. The last thought she had, before the darkness claimed her, was this: Cullen had faith in her, and there was something… formative, about that. When Cullen believed in something he could almost warp reality around that faith; could bend steel and men and nature itself into compliance. And greater than even his faith in her was this: he thought they were family, and that family was forever.

* * *

Cullen was holding his breath. Once he’d told Elam that if you were calm enough you counted not only your own spent rounds but also the shots of your enemy. It was second nature to him; he’d hear someone out shooting in the distance and he’d count in his head and work along at whatever he was doing. 

He could count gunshots like he’d been born to it, but somehow he’d lost track of how many steps Ruth had taken. Seven? Eight? How many seconds did she have left?

~~~

Guilt proved to be too heavy to carry to the top of the stairs. She let it go, along with it’s cousin: grief. 

Joseph? She wished him only the best, and hoped he’d found a woman to understand him. 

Sean? God had already heard his confession. 

Her father? She’d see him soon enough. 

Her virginity? It had been hers to give, a small Eden between her legs.

Sidney Snow? He’d been god’s creature… once. It was for precisely her _ lack _of guilt over his end that she was determined to die. 

Her faith? 

There was no guilt there. Her faith was resolute. 

It was becoming easier and easier to mount those tall, fresh steps. 

~~~

_ It had always been Cullen who walked away. _

He’d dug graves and run carrying wounded men and shifted rocks and fought with mules. All that, and the fact that he’d always been the one riding off was almost enough to drop him where he stood. 

Mary had watched him ride off to war; Lily had watched him ride to the bridge; Ruth had watched him ride out to look for clean water. Every big moment in his life, and he’d ridden off without a goddamn thought while some woman was watching his back. 

He knew what it felt like, now. Ruth was walking away from him, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to stop it. 

~~~

Ruth had always been a dreamer. After all, was there no greater dream than faith? Than eternal life? Than sacrificial love?

(Maybe dreamers were what children became when their real life wasn't worth living.)

She’d had so many dreams for Cullen Bohannon. 

* * *

“This better not be another surprise bath,” said Ruth, following Louise down a narrow path in the low, highland grass. “Because I _ know _the water is all melted snow.”

“No,” said Louise, laughing. “I’m not going to spring another bath on you.”

Ruth turned back to check on Ezra. It had been more than two weeks since his fever had broken, but a part of her still worried when he was out of her sight, now. It didn’t matter that he seemed to have more energy than he’d had before: she’d nearly lost him. She was his mother- she was allowed to worry. 

He scrambled down the path towards her, something clutched in his hand. 

“What is it?” she asked, hoping against hope that it wasn’t another toad. If it had been a plague on the Egyptians, it could stay _ outside. _

He uncurled his fingers and stretched out his hand. In the center of his palm was a fractured, slate-grey piece of rock. Slightly off-center was the impression of...something. Maybe a spiral snail shell, but Ruth didn’t think snails would like the cold of the mountains. “That’s very interesting,” she told him. 

Ezra nodded and pocketed the rock, gamboling down after Louise. 

“Are you two coming?” she called, squinting back at them. 

Ruth rolled her eyes and brought up the rear. It was a lovely morning, and most of the men were miles outside of town, building the road out into the future. Here, in the foothills, it was quiet and cool, the sunlight reminding Ruth of the watercolors she’d seen in Mrs. Palmer’s hotel. The light wasn’t just yellow or white, it was more… a distillation of all the colors at once, glittering and bright

She liked Laramie, liked the way it was protectively bordered by a tall range of spiked mountains, stretching up into heaven. It was quieter than Cheyenne, with plenty of water and grass and space. 

Ruth still hadn’t decided if she was going to leave it. 

She continued following Louise down into a little gully, which widened along the stream-bed floor. “Look,” said Louise, pointing down. There, a clear, perfectly clear circle of water pooled before spilling down onto washed smooth rocks, burbling as it went. In the smooth, circular pool glinted coins, coins of all sizes and shapes and colors. 

“It’s a fairy pool,” she said, settling in on a jut of stone above the little pool. In typical Louise fashion, she pulled a pencil and notebook from her pocket and began to sketch. 

Ezra tugged on Ruth’s sleeve and pointed down to the water. It was very shallow in most places, and the bank was wide and sandy.”Alright,” said Rith. “But stay away from the pool. It looks slippery.”

Ezra looked disappointed.

“It’s very bad luck to touch the coins,” Louise told him, not looking up from her sketch. “The sprites can curse you.”

Ezra raised his eyebrows and looked at the pool so speculatively that Ruth almost laughed. He ran off to toss rocks into the stream downriver from the fairy pool, and Ruth joined Louise on her perch. 

“How did you find out about this?” she asked, dangling her feet over the rock ledge. 

Louise studied the pool and added a rock to her sketched pile. “One of surveyors told me it was here, and I came looking. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

It was lovely. Sun dappled over the rocks and water, tinting the light with the color of new-grown leaves. The rocks themselves glinted with flecks of quartz and mica, and the water bubbled happily. As for the coins: the sparked, and teased bright stories into the air. Ruth could see why Louise was drawn to the place. 

“It’s wonderful,” Ruth agreed. “Are you writing about fairy pools?”

“I thought about it,” said Louise, rolling onto her belly to get a better look down at the coins. “But I don’t think many of the men who read my paper would care. Then I thought maybe I could add this spot to a list of sights future travellers should see, but… I don’t know. I think that would take the magic away.”

It was fanciful talk from a women who’d always been willing to print the truth for it, come what may. 

“It is a little bit magic. And look at all the coins! There’s a British shilling,” said Ruth, pointing. “And that odd one, with a square piece cut out of the middle.”

“It’s some kind of Chinese coin,” said Louise, adding a sketch of the coin to her notebook page. “I’ve heard of those.”

“Is it good luck to put money in a fairy pool?”

“I don’t know,” said Louise.

“There’s something you don’t know?” Ruth teased. 

“Ha ha,” said her friend dryly, closing the notebook and setting it aside. “I asked a few of the Irishmen on the cut crew about fairy pools. They informed me that fairy pools were Scottish, thank you very much.”

“The south was settled by the Scottish,” Ruth commented. “My father told me that. We were talking about music, I think.”

“It’s one of the reasons I like this spot,” said Louise, turning her hatless face up to the sky. It’s… American. It’s all blended together. The concept of little wood sprites living in the mountains, paying coin for a bit of luck, gambling on a superstition. There’s Nordic coin down there, the one with the runes, and even a confederate New Orleans half-dollar. See?” she pointed. 

“It’s all faith,” said Ruth, almost to herself. “Like… I don’t know. Like they were tithing out here. God made the mountains, so he made this place, too.”

They lay in the sun together, listening to Ezra splashing in the shallow, frigid waters. Birds called overhead and it was so tempting to while away the morning. Going back to town would be to face responsibility, and Ruth wasn’t ready for that yet. (She had decisions to make.)

When Louise and Ruth stood to leave, Ruth called Ezra back. She could see lumps and bumps in his pockets, and inwardly she sighed: maybe she could ask Cullen to save one of the old ammunition boxes for Ezra to keep his rocks and treasures in. 

“Here,” said Louise when Ezra wandered over. She handed a penny to Ezra, and then one to Ruth. 

“But-” Ruth began to protest. 

“C’mon,” said Louise, closing her eyes and then tossing in the coin. “You just said it yourself. It’s a tithe to god and the mountains, or whatever. Make a wish, Ezra.”

Ezra closed his eyes, clutched the penny over his heart, and then threw it. When it splashed into the pool he smirked, and Ruth would have given anything to know what he’d wished for. Could she give it to him? Or did he want to go back to his old life, and away from her forever?

“Your turn,” said Louise. She and Ezra were both watching Ruth. 

She looked down at the little copper coin glinting in her palm. What was it that she wished for? What did she want that she hadn’t admitted even in prayers? 

Ruth closed her eyes, reached her hand out over the stream, and-

-_ and wished for a home, one where Cullen would come through the door, cold streaming off him like steam from a teacup, his cheeks pink with the weather. There would be a fire in the hearth, and a roof over her head, and…. _

_ -and wished for a congregation of friends, of people who wanted to see more kindness in the world, people who would respect her faith instead of mocking it. Christians who deserved the name, and friends, and… _

_ -and wished for a family, for Ezra to have a sibling to play with, to feel the fluttering in her belly and not to worry, to only know the joy of it because that little unknown being was already so loved… _

_ -and wished to take Cullen into her bed on a sunny morning, to watch his eyes dilate to dark pools, to put her hands on him and know that he was hers and she was his and- _

And the penny dropped, and the wishes fell away.

* * *

_ Will you be there? Cullen please! _

It was the last thing she’d ask of him. Weren’t gonna be anymore gentle reminders about services on Sundays, or the bashful request for him to help raise the center beam of the church when Hell on Wheels moved down the line. He wasn’t gonna find her hauling water buckets up from the river, and she wasn’t going to blush up like a spring morning because her toted the water intended for her Saturday night bath. 

She’d asked this of him. What’d he hate more? Seeing her up there, bathed in the sun of her last morning? Or hearing her cries for his presence echoing in his ears. 

Before his decision was consciously made, Cullen’s boots had already started moving.

~~~

She was one step from the top when fear left her. Not bodily fear: she shook harder than ever, and sometime around step eight she’d become thankful for Mr. George’s hand on her arm, because he was helping to hold her up. 

No, on that penultimate step she finally stopped fearing her own wants, her own resolution, her own decisions. 

If this was a mistake, she wouldn’t have to live with it for long. 

~~~

Cullen’s heartbeat was too loud in his own ears. Was she still on the steps? Fuck him, it’d be just his godforsaken luck to show up right as the damned door dropped. 

~~~

Only hope remained in the end, and it was with a peaceful heart that Ruth sent it on its way. Hopes were dreams that lacked velocity; hope was a dream you could cling to in the night when your other dreams failed, a little raft bobbing along on a lonely sea. 

She had no more need for rafts when she had decided to embrace the pull of the depths.

~~~

To the trapdoor Ruth carried only faith- faith and love. It was love that had brought her here; the immeasurable love of a mother. 

She’d told Ezra she loved him, and that god loved him, and it didn’t matter if he ever spoke a word. She’d love him all the same. 

Mr. George tied her hands, and her body shook. He tied her feet, cutting off that instinctive means of escape, and her body shook harder. 

Had she told Cullen in plain English how she felt? She’d asked him if he loved _ her. _ If only he’d-

As the bag began to drop over her head she saw Cullen run into view, those prairie-sky eyes wild and desperate. 

“Wait!” the cry ripped from her, one last desperate attempt to glimpse the life she’d always wanted.

_ I’ll always show up, Ruth. _

He had, he had, he had. She smiled at him, as serenely and beautifully as the dawn breaking over the town she’d helped to build. 

The black cotton dropped. 

_ Did I tell him I love him? _

That was the fourteenth thing she could let go of, on this, her last day. 

Everything blurred by her, like falling away from the high blue sky all over again: the children she’d never meet, the love she’d never taste, the laughing kisses and lazy afternoons she’d never enjoy. With her lips brushing the hood she whispered, “I love-”

The door dropped. 

* * *

_..._  


_ Once upon a time, in a just and better world... _

Like the dawn of the very first day, the sun came up over Laramie. It was the kind of sunrise that made painters yearn for their brushes and caused poets to curse the boundaries of feeble human language. There are things in the world too perfect and transitory for humans to ever truly capture with art: the bliss of a first kiss, the crystalline perfection of fresh-fallen snow, the play of light against dust-motes dancing in the still air of a small wooden church.

The whitewashed wall of the church reflected the light, amplifying the weak fingers of early dawn, and the air seemed to hum in anticipation. Over the years the walls of the church would absorb sermons and hymns and community. Prayers would saturate the rafters, and the smell of beeswax candles and wood-polish would season the air. It would be an approachable house of god; one led by a beneficent reverend more concerned with kindness and love than the detailed instructions of men long-dead. 

On this particular morning, the church stood empty. Not barren or lonely- it was hopeful. 

Already miles away, the light of a fresh day was absorbed by the soot-blackened iron of a railway engine. It was smoking in the cool morning air, and the shriek of steam and ambition it released was feral, a battle cry against the trials to come. 

There’s something poetic about trains: they can’t turn themselves. They’re vectors, traveling with momentum and direction from point to point, from past to future. This particular train engine was heading west, its tracks unfurling behind it like a seam of sutures, stitching the country together from east to west.

Most of the individuals who built the Great Road wouldn’t be remembered. They wouldn’t be remembered because no one man could have built the railroad alone. In the end, it was a family that drove the train west. It was a family who worked through prairie fires and sickness and death. It was a family that picked each other up again when disaster struck, and it was family that kept them moving, willing to see their terrible undertaking through to the end.

While the church stood empty and the engine steamed, the rose-hued blush of dawn caught in the smile of one traveler, and the soft grey eyes of another. A drowsing child rode between them on a high wagon seat, and the sunrise caught in his hair and mapped the freckles on his cheeks.

The three travelers were part of a larger current of wagons and riders, all of them streaming west. All of them had come there for their own reasons; all of them had their own hopes and dreams. But after hundreds of miles and deaths and heartbreaks, all of them had learned this: 

Nobody is guaranteed another sunrise. It isn’t a promise, and there are no easy roads to walk. All they could do was keep looking ahead, and to walk their roads together, one step at a time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Sophie: because you also see the beauty in those who strive. <3 Thank you for all the laughs, encouragement, and friendship.


End file.
